Arrangements and methods for recording vehicles moving along a traffic lane by means of at least one camera and/or other devices for detecting the contour or spatial structure of the vehicle and, if necessary, of its velocity are for example known from different applications for monitoring or traffic detecting.
Automatic control systems for road toll, for example, which are based on the communication between vehicle and a corresponding communication device at the toll station, require, that in each road toll paying vehicle a corresponding communication device is present, from which the essential data of the vehicle can be recalled, which serve for its identification, wherein furthermore, also still the used road sections should be recorded and/or transmitted. The system has to be able to identify each vehicle, which has to pay toll, clearly as such a vehicle. I.e. that such vehicles should not be detected, which do not have to pay toll and on the other hand that all vehicles, which have to pay toll, are detected as such. To provide a method and a device for recording vehicles in movement, which can distinguish automatically between toll paying and non-toll paying vehicles, to thus prevent the unnecessary recording of large amounts of data, it is provided according to the Printed Document DE 101 48 289 A1, that before the recording of the contour and/or spatial structure, the recording and pursuit of the vehicle is carried out by means of a LIDAR-system, wherein from the LIDAR-data, the path and velocity of the vehicle are estimated and are then assigned to the determined contour- and structure data. The device has a LIDAR-system, which is aligned such, that it records a vehicle at a distance in front of the recording position of the camera and/or the other devices. Furthermore a central processing unit is provided, which is connected to the LIDAR and forecasts from the LIDAR-data the path and velocity of the vehicle, if necessary corrects these data and carries out on the basis of these data an assignment to the data of the other device and/or the recorded video image. A disadvantage is, that in the combination of a LIDAR-system and a video imaging device the respective results have to be securely and reproducibly assigned to each other, which is in comparison cumbersome. In the evaluation of the video images furthermore the problem is given, that the evaluation is made difficult because of the perspective distortion and by the distortion itself and on the other hand by the reducing yield of the light with distance from the camera, which leads to a clearly weaker illumination of the areas of the vehicle arranged further away from the camera. This is essentially important in longer vehicles, like trucks.